If Hagar Shipley met Stella Gibbons ...

.... well, according to Kerry Clare, that match might give you someone kin to Our Woman, heroine of Malarky.    It's as good a comparison as I've seen.

And that's not all Kerry has to say about Malarky either.  Here's a taste:

Malarky is very much of the world– the Irish economy, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the plight of immigrants, mental illness, grief– and yet, its interiority is impermeable. When Our Woman spies her son shirtless in the barn, she notes, “He must have been freezing, his pale body bleary and quivering, trousers at his ankles.” However perversely, she is ever a mother, urging on a sweater. But she’s not just a comic figure; Schofield evokes Our Women with remarkable sympathy: “Mainly she had wanted to hit him about the head and shout these aren’t the things I have planned for you.” Malarky is a journey beyond the limits of love, an equally sad and hilarious portrait of motherhood.

“Malarky is like nothing else, and what everything should be,” is something I wrote down this weekend. First, because it’s as funny as it’s dark, and also because it dares readers to be brave enough to follow along an unconventional narrative. Though the winding path is only deceptively tricky– Our Woman’s voice is instantly familiar, and the shifting perspectives remain so intimate and immediate that the reader follows. Consenting to be led, of course, which is the magic of Malarky. This is a book that will leave you demanding more of everything else you read.

For her whole review please go here.

Malarky: The GoodReads Giveaway

Yes, it's a brave new world out there, and digitally-speaking we at Biblioasis are occasionally behind the 8-Ball.  So we're trying something new to support the just-released launch of Anakana Schofield's Malarky.  We're giving away ten copies over at GoodReads, in the hopes that a few more people pick it up and help us spread the word about just how wonderful this book is.   Follow this link for a chance to win.

In other Malarky news, Claudia Caspar had this to say about Malarky on Twitter (and this ranks as my favourite reader response so far...): 

Reading Anakana Schofield's new book Malarky - if James Joyce was a woman, and much funnier - so yeah, it's brilliant.

... and a US reader/writer has posted a half-review of Malarky on his blog:

This is what’s I’m calling a mid-book review.  It might be particularly helpful to readers who don’t want me to reveal the end. 

Schofield’s from Vancouver, but this book’s set in rural Ireland, circa now or maybe a few years ago.  Our Woman (that’s all the name the protagonist gets; it’s a spin on the classic Everyman) discovers her husband’s cheating and plots revenge.  It’s an old template, to be sure, complete with the requisite character development.  The passive female awakens.   I usually hate this sort of book, but where the classics in this model typically involve dainty, prim, proper heroines, Our Woman’s a rawer sort.  So’s Schofield.  Her sex scenes are packed with fun and raunch.  The fun is important, necessary.  A woman’s plight is an old problem.  For many readers, it’s worn.  We know already that women have been misued and continue to be misused.  It’s patriarchy.  But the problem is aged, not solved.  Perhaps it can never be solved.  Schofield recognizes that if it cannot be solved it must continue to be plumbed, perhaps with new instruments.  We’ve seen the serious works featuring serious moments of serious drama.  You can’t teach “The Awakening” or “The Yellow Wallpaper” without hearing groans–often from women.  By turning Our Woman’s plight into comedy, she can let us view and enjoy the old problem from a new-feeling angle.  This sounds essayistic because it is essayistic.  Let me just say that Our Woman’s misadventure with the salesman’s not to be missed.  

So: don't miss it.  

The Q&Q reviews Malarky

In the just-release March issue of Quill & Quire, Emily M. Keeler offers a solid review of Anakana Schofield's Malarky.  Launching next month, we expect to get copies into our hands here at the Bibliomanse at some point next week.  Here's a bit of the review:

Irish-Canadian literary critic Anakana Schofield¹s first novel is a tumultuous ride. Malarky asks questions without providing answers, chronicling the emotional, mental, and occasionally menial anxieties of Our Woman as she struggles with her own agency and desire. Set in contemporary Ireland, the book overflows with subtle and sometimes subversive allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d¹Urbervilles, site-specific contemporary Irish art, and Catholic history. Yet Schofield's strong prose style and inventive approach to structure will likely reward readers unfamiliar with these cultural references.


... 


Schofield¹s formal experimentation is in perfect tandem with her thematic content.  ... Our Woman oscillates between trying to please the men in her life ­-- her withdrawn husband, tellingly referred to as Himself, and her adoring gay son, Jimmy ­-- and trying to discern how to achieve her own empowered pleasure. She becomes obsessed with sex as a path to such empowerment, and takes a young lover after discovering her husband¹s infidelity and the bodily joy Jimmy finds with other young men.

For the rest of the review, please pick up a copy of the current Q&Q.  Or better yet: pick up a copy of  Malarky.  It'll be available everywhere very, very soon.